Two columnists at the New York Times published an article within the last week, and wow are they an example of the good and the bad. Here are links for reference:
Keep in mind, I am an Obama supporter. Additionally, keep in mind a rhetorically and cognitively fossilized Lefty might resonate with both opinion pieces, but I like one and hate the other.
David Brooks takes the highest road here. Keep in mind Brooks is a conservative, and if he were to simply take a default stance it would be on the side opposite of populist liberal. In the his piece he praises the Obama appointments for cabinet and White House staff. He uses a phrase to describe the type of Democratic politician Obama is selecting: "First, these are open-minded individuals who are persuadable by evidence". With this sentence, Brooks has revealed the mantra of The New Age that is upon us.
The Old Age is the one where academics, voters, politicians, and agit-prop careerists in PR positions at think-tanks and watchdog groups stood lockstep in solidarity with these opposing Titans: A ) Hippie and black hating George Wallace campaign rhetoric that was co-opted into Nixon's southern strategy B ) Countercultural assumptions that industrialization is evil and needs dismantling, and every culture with brown or black people is inherently superior and should be militantly assisted in order to replace WASP hegemony. My question is, can we start brutally eliminating proponents of A and B now?
Back to this New Age that sprung up in 2008. It is political empiricism, performance and merit based. In the Old Age, you took a life long stance of hating or revering Blacks/Whites/Industry/Nature/Lesbians/Cities/Public-Property/Money/Localism/Bicycles/Air-Travel/War and you voted for whoever gave the sometimes coded messages in their speeches that signaled a support of your hate agenda ( I'm including you peace-lesbians in this who revere a mythical Tibet and would close the Pentagon, with a little spiteful blip in your hearts). Of course the letdown is when this politician isn't really gunning down Blacks/Whites/Industry/Nature/Lesbians/Cities/Public-Property/Money/Localism/Bicycles/Air-Travel/War, but merely implementing punitive dysfunctionalisms into agency practices that perpetuate the A vs B culture war.
The Old Age A vs B culture war is void of ratio, void of rationalism, mystical. But that is a view from high in the intellectual clouds. There is a corporeal basis for everything intellectual. Ah, the corporeal. Let's look at these old battle bots politically born in the 1960's. THEY ARE EITHER ELDERLY, POOR, OR THE YOUNG ARE ATTENDING INTELLECTUALLY SECOND OR THIRD CLASS COLLEGES. They are Spain after the smartest migrated to the Netherlands -a land of the mediocre beating their chests and talking about pride while a vacuum of merit sucks a good fate from all future scenarios.
Bye, Old Age.
Gail Collins is nice enough to write a column for every Old Age-ist on the left [B] side. Nevermind that no one in a position of political or intellectual relevance is talking about crushing the GWB regime, much like we are not talking about crushing Joseph McCarthy. The Anti-Bush T-Shirt industry should not be a perpetual, perennial phenomenon, get a life people, you're embarrassing anti-Bush people like me. So go ahead and read the Collins piece, it is an IQ test, an entrance test for whether you lack the intellectual heft to enter the New Age.
Eno and Byrne have made a new record, Everything that Happens will Happen Today, their first in 30 years. Byrne and Eno began their artistic relationship in the late seventies with 3 Talking Heads albums, followed by their groundbreaking album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Songs from all of the above will be performed in this concert, but not in that order.
Their performing together, and at Seattle's premier opera and symphony hall, has me really considering seeing the show. Both men are more than musical giants of a bygone era, they are still a central presence in current intellectualism. Eno is a board member of the Long Now [link], and Byrne has the giant building instrument in New York City [link]. In the late 90's Byrne wrote an eerie social/art critique piece for either the Atlantic or New Yorker, I can't remember. I do remember reading it and being struck by its "prophecy". He wrote that the soft plastic, rounded edges, candy colored tech aesthetic that was so hot in gadget and furniture design [example ] was all very cute and pretty, but that something sinister lying beneath this cute and candy-like society, and may emerge someday soon. Then came G.W. Bush, the Taliban blew up the Buddhas of Bamyan, and then Islamic extremists killed 3,000 Americans on September 11th. Back to talking about Byrne, we live in a world of artists who long for the status of shaman and soothsayer in our culture, who believe they are attenuated especially for perceiving subtle shifts of popular aesthetic and able to be an Oracle of Delphi sounding an alarm. Most artists fall short of oracle or prophet, David Byrne actually did it.
( I am not saying David is the greatest teller of the American story, the teller of our whole on-the-ground real experience and semantic space. That distinction goes to the Minutemen. Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan are more famous for this epic 20th century Americana song crafting, but the Minutemen took it as far it could ever go. )
Benaroya Hall
Wednesday
February 18, 2009
7:30pm
$45
http://www.theparamount.com/artists/?artist=919
Doesn't this house negro slur kind of "not stick" when the black person OWNS the house. Back in the day when blacks did not own their own house, yeah, this epithet made some sense. ( although I think any class, especially race, must break the bonds of solidarity in order to become better off ) So back to Obama and Rice. They are very real intellectuals ( professors at US academic institutions ), and have made enough money to place themselves in the upper-middle-class. They own or embody more of this economic paradigm than most whites.
To Ayman al-Zawahiri: No, my towelheaded sandnegro, these are not house negroes, they have not "accidently" broken ranks with you or your league, rather, these are negroes working to kill you and every scum bag supporter that happens to be in the same building with you.
When I think of the hard working people making automobiles in the USA, I usually think of these plants and the cars they produce:
To exclusively think of unionized Ford, GM and Chrysler plants in Michigan is counterintuitive, since few people I know would by products made at those plants. I wish mass media and politicians would get on the same page as Americans have been on for over 20 years: Americans do buy vehicles made in the USA, mostly from the above list. The spin doctors from the unions and the Big Three love to control our dialogue by saying "American auto manufacturers" and only mean Ford/GM/Chrysler, which is a lot like like saying "people" and only meaning "white people". It is a dirty rhetorical trick the American people are not on board with.
The Church of Latter Day Saints is one of the most progressive of all religions grouped in Christianity. There seems to be a Left and Right LDS, and the Left almost always out Left me. The LDS leader's decision to do anything intense and overt with Prop 8 is a case of really poor reasoning, and poor "religious" reasoning. Here is the logic breakdown:
Society is already divergent from an LDS path. I don't expect the LDS to be ambivalent about this, and it is commendable on some level for LDS to sincerely want a better fate of the wider society. But to jump in with both feet on a single issue is a lose-lose-lose scenario.
Lose-lose-lose; here are the 3 ways the LDS lost:
First, for the LDS to feel threatened by society's behavior and semantics (a legal status is merely semantic). This is a core religiosity dimension, show me schism that is so weak its members might turn into gays any other way of life that religion happens to oppose -and I say that schism is has an internal cohesion and coherence problem threatening their "faith" more than anything external. So to drive this home, I'm calling the LDS faith itself weak and prone to demise by its own device(s).
Second, for imposing LDS doctrine on society, especially one as eclectic as the population of California. Faith and metaphor wise, this may sound like a good old David and Goliath story. Amongst the faithful in any religion such a challenge always looks appealing. Herein is the perfect storm: Wanting to be faithful and rock-throwing David is a temptation in of itself, it is indulgent testosterone driven hail-mary-pass religious activism. LDS fell for this temptation. But in this case the opponent wasn't Goliath -it was the Death Star, Klingons, and now even the Terminator. The LDS stood up and threw their little rock, and unfortunately for them, they hit it. What they hit is something big, from outer space, and may not die.
Third, the LDS did wrong for disrupting Western society's progress towards more cohesion and peace. For the last 50 years society has experimented with no boundaries (no definitions). Countercultural trends inverted all that had previously defined opposites such as right and wrong, crime and righteousness. Maybe this was needed. But now I believe we are starting to settle in with some boundaries, slowly stating again what is right and wrong. Gay marriage is part of this return to a right-and-wrong sensitive society, allowing homosexuals to have an overt place in civic legitimacy. Gay marriage can serve as one of the larger "gains" we made with the last few decades of discord and experimentation. Sure, I know gay marriage is not in the plan for most Christian Churches, but these churches should see the better place that society is ascending to, and not be THE roadblock to a better place. These churches should have practiced an outward appearance of political and emotional ambivalence, neither condoning nor condemning. Only the self-centered think they always have to do one or the other, the wise know when to shut up.
"The proletariat seizes the power of the state and first of all transforms the means of production into the property of the state." -State and Revolution
So here is the muse ( and the reader is expected to know the gist of Marxism, Lawrence Lessig, GPL and creative commons licensing ): The Soviets transformed Russia from an illiterate peasant class agrarian and artisan culture to a literate heavy industry culture in just a few years. Skipping the misery of millions as an indictment of the regime, I'm selecting the industrial output as an indictment. Russia produced big, clunky, undependable crap. Always inferior to anything made in the West or Japan/Korea.
Over in another part of the world, almost immediately after the fall of the Soviets, a new form of human called "geeks" created a computer operating system and ancillary programs, then big cross-platform scripting frameworks, that changed every game of man. The output was tangible and definable in some ways, but the epiphenomenon was what everyone knew was the remarkable aspect. The epiphenomenon was innovation.
The proletariat can nationalize a few cranes and the port, oil, and coal, but my musing is that the means of innovation is the goose laying the golden egg. And those without that goose have a less vibrant or resilient lifestyle.
It may be interesting as pragmatic budget concerns drive the farmers and ranchers away from their identity with oversized 4WD trucks such as the Suburban and on to less oil consuming farm vehicles. Since the 1970's, when trucks started being large and impressive rather than just hard and dependable, Joe Redneck has been very attached to their rigs. Might I suggest this Pakistani built motorcycle workhorse?
"The country must be governed from the middle," Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters Wednesday. "You have to bring people together to reach consensus on solutions that are sustainable and acceptable to the American people."-New Congress must govern from the middle. FoxNews
Nancy Pelosi has made this statement as a guiding principle for Democrats. Combined with President-elect Obama's constant assertion of centrist ideals, this should provide a great deal of clarity to the American people as to what to expect in the next two years. This message was sent out the day after the elections, in a style that both major parties in Washington D.C. use to announce to what ends their agenda will serve.
Nancy Pelosi just defeated a political challenger from the Far Left, Cindy Sheehan. See:Pelosi defeats Sheehan. SFGate. This in of itself should send a message to the center and center-right as to where San Francisco and Berkely liberals truly stand. And if San Fran is voting down the Far Left, then the Far Left really have no "base" of operations, and are thrust into the wilderness.
Note: I hope the Far Left die in that wilderness. Or better yet, start plenty of powerless non-profits, everyone of which will likely buy copying machines, computers, office furniture, hire a website programmer, and pay a graphics artist to create a logo. ( Hey Revolutionaries, Thanks for the $$, and good luck telling each other you are right(eous). - the Economy. )
I have an acquaintance who lives in Wasilla, Alaska, and wrote the day before the election with these fears that are being discussed in his local church: After Obama is elected, laws will be implemented that prevent people from speaking their beliefs, specifically people will not be able to say "I believe gay marriage is wrong, and against the wishes of God". The other thing some at his church are afraid of is gun rights being taken away. One of his local church leaders is buying extra ammunition, saying that if Obama wins then he may not be able to legally get more ammunition.
Here are my responses to all the above:
I believe the Democrats are going to rebuild the public part of this country -the parts that make all of our lives and livelihoods work. For too long we have had a fear of the Far Left, and run to shakedown artists feigning they give a sh_t about conservative values, or any values. We had to kill two birds with one stone to kill either one. With Obama, we did -the Far Left and the Republican shakedown artists are both swept into the dustbin of powerlessness. Tip for America: Keep both of them dead by keeping both of them dead.
“We’re entering a new era – not only in terms of voting, we’re entering a new millennial presidency – it’s not only that young people turned out in big numbers, but also the way in which they were engaged in the process. There’s a whole new level of transparency and access that Obama as president will utilize to much more engage young people.”
That was evident in the way Obama reacted to his win. He chose first to send an email to supporters thanking them, before heading out to speak in the glare of television klieg lights to the throngs of tens of thousands of cheering - some tearing-up - supporters at Grant Park on Tuesday night.
- Obama’s turnout historical in numbers, diversity. Christian Science Monitor
I have an ad using Googles Adwords advertising service. It has been in operation a little less than 24 hours. The ad has already been shown 17,537 times, for a total cost of $0.35 to me. ( I am one the world's cheapest advertisers, with a limit of $5 per month, so I can only afford a few cents per day for my worldwide ad campaign. )
15,635 of these ad viewings were in the Google "content network", which can be anything from the New York Times to a blogspot blog. The remaining views were seen by users of Google search, using certain keywords.
Economically, Adwords has not made me any money yet. Maybe the excitement I feel is in the ease of use by me the advertiser, and the reach of the advertising. I am excited that memes can be spread this far, this cheaply.
Technical glossary: By 17, 537 "views" I mean my ad was seen on a webpage, I do not mean the users clicked on my ad. My ad was only clicked on 5 times, and that is the only time I am charged money for the ads. My average cost per click was $0.07.
This is a list of items that may be useful in an economic collapse in which new ad hoc decentralized industry arises.
Lumenlab makes a $600 robot tool called miCro which is not only the all-purpose tool many people need, it can also build parts for their $1600 RoGR robot tool which will:
"Replace most tools in your shop, improve the quality of your work and spend less time doing it!"
They proclaim that do-it-yourself-and-then-have-the-robots-do-it-for-you is the go-to philosophy of the New Great Depression:
"Every dollar spent must count in today's economy and Lumenlab's robotics products are not only the best value on the market, you can use them to generate income!"
They also sell $230 recycled desktop computers with Ubuntu and the software for controlling the robots pre-installed. If you add $65 for a used 15" LCD monitor (latest RE*PC price) and $25 for a keyboard and mouse, then you can get a basic home/small business fabrication system for under $1000 and the full enchilada for under $2000. In other words physical fabrication technology is now about the same cost as the computer hardware you use to design electronic content.
“The defining characteristics of junk thought, which manifests itself in the humanities and social sciences as well as the physical sciences, are anti-rationalism and contempt for countervailing facts and expert opinion. It cannot be stressed enough that junk thought emanates from both the left and right, even though each group—in academia, politics, and cultural institutions—thrives on accusing the other of being the sole source of irrationality….The real power of junk thought lies in its status as a centrist phenomenon, fueled by the American credo of tolerance that places all opinions on an equal footing and makes little effort to separate fact from opinion” (Jacoby 211).
- Jacoby, Susan. The Age of American Unreason. 2008;
from chapter titled, "Junk Thought."
I am writing this blog entry acknowledging my blind-man's view of an elephant.
Reference materials:Along with the three documents above, a fourth reference is this snippet from a friend's email:
Our conversations frequently touch on eschatology (the end of the world) whether it's a religious eschatology like the second coming or a secular eschatology like peak oil, economic collapse or kurzweil singularity. It's interesting how people react differently to an anticipated end of the world regardless of it's precise nature.
Finally there are people who see the ending of worlds as an endless cycle which should be endured rather then fought, escaped or embraced. The old religions: Hinduism, Shinto, Roman and Orthodox Catholicism for example encourage this attitude in many of their adherents, which you can see in the internal politics of India or the apocalyptic science fiction of Japan. I particularly recommend the novel A Canticle for Liebowitz as one Catholic's post-apocalyptic vision of the future.
A key theme in Canticle is the preservation of books (and eventually all knowledge) by the Albertian Order of Liebowitz, and it's implications for the rebirth of technology and long-term survival of the human race. The monks contend that this is what the Church has always done, even though worldly governments and philosphers go through cycles of creation, destruction and reinvention of ideas as well as civilization itself.
I do not have a working articulate synthesis-thesis that ties all the above together, but I do have a bullet list of ideas to popcorn into this dialogue space:
With source code text files being the bedrock of the internet civilization/organism, are programmers standing in the position of Albertian Order of Liebowitz? Or maybe the early free software pioneers at least? Better than Irish monks who preserved Greco-Roman scholastic greatness through the 1000 years of ignorance in Europe, the OSS programmers are preserving text (source code) that moves and operates on itself, which is an order of magnitude higher than the mission of the Irish monks. [ see the auto-catalytic reference ]
If money is the nutrient of the internet super-organism , are the recent global monetary troubles something that could arouse the imperative of self-awareness in the ii? Given D. Brooks opinion that human perceptive abilities are too weak for global investment, the super-organism needs massive global scales of wealth, and humans need the global transfer of information and goods, are we at a crossroads in which humans and the super-organism have a mutual interest and urgency to address that interest? [ see the kevin kelly super-organism reference ]
Extending #2. Will the world's middle and lowest classes see their need of free flowing global information as more imperative than the wealthiest, and see efficiencies gained by the super-organism becoming human's transactional policeman? Will the world's less-than-most-wealthy see the internet transactional civilization of Amazon/Google as their only true savior, rather than Luddite dreams of basal economies ( local and less technology) rising up to rescue their families?
Just read the article. The author is either:
The author doesn't get that we are making the meaningful and useful part of a telecommunication infrastructure, the last mile of it. Or more like the last few inches of the TCP/IP layer where those worthless bits get turned into what we really want and need.
Yes, a lot of activity will cease. Which kind? The kind that is all hype, the dross, the crap, the stuff that marketing is telling is cool rather than the true popular will. Thank god for everyone of these deaths. Thank god.
Open info culture will whittle down to projects that resemble the seminal moments of its beginnings: Stallman's obsessive pursuit of a C compiler, Torvald's posting of an OS project. Open info culture will become once again Zen, the users crafting what they use.
No, this will not do much for getting some chicken on the dinner table, or the roof fixed, but then that's not what open info culture was originally about in its purer days.
A note on specifics: I would see myself using Google's cloud computing services MORE, not less, if I am less wealthy. I see myself using only free software to do anything on a computer. If no new open source was created, I bet I can do anything needed with the python, perl and sqllite we already have. Even if Wikipedia was to slow in its addition of new material, I would use what's already there. Google may make less revenue if economic activity goes down, but I bet it still has a resiliency much like the broadcasting and entertainment business did during the Depression and World War 2.
My friend Seth provided this schema of combat operations process employed by sexually promiscuous females.
A woman who is disrupting a working group by 'ho'in' around is simply exploiting a weakness in a culture whose family values are based on romantic monogamy. It is not especially difficult to bond quickly with fellow workers and get inside their social OODA loop, getting a great deal of power with limited resources: "In order to win, we should operate at a faster tempo or rhythm than our adversaries--or, better yet, get inside [the] adversary's Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action time cycle or loop. ... Such activity will make us appear ambiguous (unpredictable) thereby generate confusion and disorder among our adversaries--since our adversaries will be unable to generate mental images or pictures that agree with the menacing as well as faster transient rhythm or patterns they are competing against." (Think about that Boyd quote from a sexually promiscuous woman's perspective.)
Of course it is not only women who can manipulate people in ways that undermine their ability to act. Hucksters, motivational speakers and spiritual gurus use similar tactics. They always have something "clever" to say which stops the conversation and stupefies the mind, as you get stuck halfway in Observe-Orient-Observe-Orient-Repeat paralysis. And if you call them on it, refusing to be caught flat footed and keep maneuvering, then they call you Shrill, Militant, Agressive, Domineering, just as you would be labeled, Insensitive, Sexist, Misogynistic and Abusive for complaining about sexual sabotage.
It is October 21st 2008 and I just mailed my absentee ballot yesterday for the November election. This morning there is an article in the local paper highlighting the profiles of candidates running for Washington State Superintendent of Education ( a hotly contested position ).
I use this as an example of "asynchronous personalization and convenience versus communal ritual". The media will be serving up information and disinformation within the next two weeks synchronized to work with those attending the ritual of election day poll attendance. It is interesting, beyond the domain of politics or even media influence on society, to note how being out of sync with a ritual creates a disjoint with timed information.
I am thinking of any communal ritual here. Election day poll attendance, Sunday church attendance, Ramadan, or even the timing of gift giving to a particular day (Dec 25th). I am not against: Islamic fasting, Bible study and reflection, Xmas gifts, or voting , I am emphasizing the choice between 1) just doing the action and 2) doing the action coordinated with others.
Whole writing and academic careers have been built upon promoting asynchronous individualism or communal ritualism. Both have their strengths, and we don't have to be so stupid as to side with just one for our whole lives.
I definitely become more proficient and happy in asynchrony. The advent of wide spread use of the internet in the 90's seemed to help me intellectually and to communicate with others -I went for 24 years without a phone because I hated communicating in a real time dyadic conversation, before email there was no way to get ahold of me besides writing a letter to my often changing address. I dwell well in asynchrony. But then I exist on the margins of our species and cultural boundaries.
Synchrony and ritual is knocking on my door. In the last few days my wife has opened up a quest for ritual in our lives, a sacred place to participate the sacred time of Christ Mass. [her blog entry here]
X VERSUS Y is not a tension -it is the force that propels a return of balance. I'm glad for have the powerful Gods Asynchrony and Synchrony in my life.
From seanat: " It probably starts with public awareness and getting people to view the land as more valuable for conservation than for building."
This sounds like a Zero Growth perspective, which is exactly opposite of a wise or reasonably progressive society. The Earth is first and foremost an economic engine. The cultures in the world who do not operate on an economics-first principle are noteworthy as impoverished, powerless people.
There is likely an answer to this in technology, something along the lines of additives to the water that could eat away at the pollutants. I am not saying we have the answer yet, but we should be emphasizing solutions that are technical, not natural.
My comment posted on article: Science panel says "radical" changes needed to control stormwater.
Posted by JoeUser at 10/9/08 9:56 a.m. 194545
I attended Roosevelt from 77-81. I was robbed twice on school grounds by black students, and this was almost a daily occurrence among my friends back then. The attackers were nearly always kids that had been bussed in from other schools, so we never knew who they were, and they typically disappeared from school for a week or two afterwards, so the problem never went away.
Regarding reader "Roosevelt" comment about baseball bats...it was also fairly common for people to show up at school with a trunk full of them after an incident.
I know one student who ran down the stairs in front of the school when a black kid pulled a knife and attempted to rob him. The attacker threw the knife from the top of the stairs and managed to nick my friend in the back.
I'm not afraid to say that it was black students committing these crimes, because that's who it was. Is it racist to state that fact? I don't recall a single instance of a friend being robbed by another white kid.
I had many black friends in high school, and still have many today. I don't care what color a persons skin is as long as they are good people. Unfortunately, many experiences in high school and while living in the Central District for three years have made me wary.
In the NIMBYism vs Global-Solutionism choice, the later is untenable and not what local community resources should concern themselves with. Global-Solutionism is just an old Catholic Social Justice construct ( universal solutions ) that is fine for someone's religion but is ruining civic dialogue and purpose.
I am progressive and ONLY practice Nimby-ism. The exception is the global effect I intentionally introduce with my commerce, which is heavy on the use of Amazon.com.
( the reason I'm so touchy about NIMBYism is in our local papers the dominant refrain when dealing with neighborhoods with high drug abuse on the streets is to denounce NIMBY's, and claim we need to the wider scope of poverty or homelessness statewide or nationwide. I disagree with that dominant refrain, )
Supporting material:In this earlier rant [ not my best writing ] I'm juxtaposing a class of doers versus a class of investors who make nothing but own merely by speculation. In this post I'm juxtaposing the Users of cultural artifacts versus Absentee Abstract Ownership.
If or when our economy and society implodes/devolves, the most crucial question is who the police and military will work for-who will they point their guns at, serve eviction notices to, or help in standing guard for their property. As people's monetary resources dry up, it will be crucial whether the police/military stay cohesive, and if so, who will they determine owns the physical resources of this industrial society. If they side with the Absentee Abstract Ownership class by removing people from the use of the cultural artifacts necessary for a modern life, then we have a recipe to replay the horror of the early Middle Ages -Roman citizens became lifelong debtors (slaves) to their creditors. ( It took the bubonic plague to kill off those who maintained the status quo of Europe, and allowed in the slow march out of the Dark Ages into modernity).
This sheriff in Chicago is functioning as a counterexample: police siding with the general population rather than the Absentee Abstract Ownership class. Want to avoid decades or hundreds of years of serfdom? Support police like the Sheriff of Chicago. I recommend a meme, THE SHERIFF OF CHICAGO, as a quick reference to the archetype and the political construct.
It is no small detail that this THE SHERIFF OF CHICAGO emerged from the people, rather than academia, and it was first publicized on Fox News and CNN, rather than the alternative-left press or left leaning bloggers. Even if the mechanics of the THE SHERIFF OF CHICAGO is essentially socialist, I think if it had come from the left or academia it would have provoked the police/military, along with ordinary citizens, into a more staunch support of the Absentee Abstract Ownership class. If it had come from the left or academia, I'm pretty sure I would have died a slave.
John Robb's Resilient Community (see his blog) thesis is a crucial concept to anticipate and build upon if our society goes through major disruptions. THE SHERIFF OF CHICAGO meme needs to be spoken easily and frequently by everyone participating in the early construction phase of the resilient community.
Craigslist philosophy thread that I started.
Today I vow < linux_lance > 10/02 06:52:32That humans can reach their ultimate potential by enhancing their bodies with nanotechnology and computer bionic replacements, but essentially the mind left as it is - with the exceptions of possible faster (data) processing by enhancing certain cerebral functions? OR - do you propose or is your main focus on man creating a new machine totally void of all biological and organic features and programmed with the creation (not yet conceived) of artificial intelligence? In other words, do you propose that humans create a better more efficient model of themselves, but eventually the biological, organic, humanoid would soon be extinct and the world left with our creation to further our goals? E.g., instead of creating the superman within ourselves, you would rather forgo your species and let humans die with the legacy of being God and creator of a new and more efficient thinking machine?
It certainly brings new meaning to the Nietzsche phrase "God is dead"...or as some theists would interpret as being that our God created us and then once free will was placed within us our creator died -his purpose no longer needed. Makes one ponder how many "Gods" we have gone through and is it our time now to be God and create a model in our own image and somehow give it free will and AI and our existence extinct.
I think I am choosing this one->" man creating a new machine totally void of all biological and organic features and programmed with the creation (not yet conceived) of artificial intelligence? "
But there is a little more to it than your two choices ( which you wrote pretty well and are accurate ).
The third choice would be the machines governing man, and the whole planet. Not eliminating man, but being in symbiotic relationship. The symbiotic would be in job vacancy. Man gives up a huge amount of social engineering and control jobs such as legislative, courts, police and gives this job to the machines. The machines would excel by not doing to two things humans often did in those positions: corruption and/or performance inconsistency. Even the honest cops and legislatures out there have limits to what they can learn and what they can see.
would cause human degradation, or equal upgrading?
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/06/will_we_let_goo.php
from organic to synthetic will always equate to a need to keep up with progress? Do we constantly run the risk of having too much of a gap in leader to follower, and limited resources dictating the survival of the fittest?
This retool of our lived environment, and the resulting gaps and disparities, is nothing new. It was an intuitively known when European descendants converted land into crops for global trade rather than local sustenance for aboriginal agrarians, nomads or hunter-gatherers. Britain wanted a line of demarcation, to leave the aboriginals land for their lifestyle and technological strata. The American Revolution was primarily about deregulating that line of demarcation, opening up an unmitigated competition between technological cultures.
By this precedent, the question of protections to mitigate disparity between leader and follower was answered.
continues to get wider, and narrower, wider, and...
On the other hand, there have been major falls of civilizations, where the majority imprint of said civilization, is left behind.
Can a more connected world suffer an even greater downfall? Should overly dependent needs hierarchies be broken? And, conversely, should too loose systems become more efficient...
Or is the continual adaptation a normative state?
I believe continual adaptation is the normative state. A stronger statement is that anthropology is the study of continual adaptation, and where it is different from zoology's evolution is on cultural/technology emphasis alongside genetic mutation.
Can a more connected world suffer an even greater downfall?
Not sure. Most of the anarcho-primitivists talk I hear seems to think "blow up internet, trains,planes, and autos and we will have a localism utopia" seem to forget the world was very connected in the era of wooden hulls, metal swords, gunpowder, and sails. I'm fearful of that meaner world we would downfall to, but mapping out plans of how to survive in a world of more prevalent schism genocide and slavery. But complete downfall to eating grass, don't think so.
Should overly dependent needs hierarchies be broken?
The Global Systems-Health role of terrorism is to test, and harden, the Global Systems-Health. Thanks nihilistic criminals, terrorists, and hackers -you are our unpaid systems test engineers.
wins the day?
It seems the extremities always collapse to the center...
Moderation or something else. Maybe not moderation on rate change ('let's don't change so fast'), but more like ubiquity of the change. Ah here, if a big change, then speedy wide dispersal of the change.
So I'm seeing moderation as one optimization doctrine, but another optimization doctrine being immoderation -extreme and swift change for a lot of people.
Hmmm, maybe moderation *does* win the day. Extreme mutation is an ok practice, but not of a whole class/species/type, as this is very poor evolutionary gambling.
Extreme change without speedy wide dispersal is, to me, the mother of volatile social tensions. I tend to be very pro ubiquity.
Major shifts require equally major dispersal to bridge the gap, while the majority of evolution is moderately sequenced.
Well done.
A little backstory: I'm from Arkansas. Live in Seattle. Will vote for Obama. Do not like George Bush as President. I am liberal by most right winger perspectives. What I say in this blog posting is analysis, not my preferences. And the analysis is aided by my extensive experience in the backwaters of the Southeast, combined with undergrad and graduate studies in postmodernism in uberleftist schools in the Northwest.
The Left and (good) established media are getting it wrong on Sarah Palin. She is qualified because she is a hockey mom. Her answers in interviews that have sent pundits into a tailspin of derision are the articulations of your standard hockey mom, or a mom that owns a successful diner in Memphis Tennessee, or a mom that is in a bureaucratic position at the local police station. I'm met 100's of those types of women, kin to a few, and can tell you for sure that all they need to know is the leader of Iran hates Israel and the next thing out of their mouth is "then we need to kill that man".
America will vote for a woman like that.
Postmodernism has taught the legitimacy of the less than aristocratic, the less than educated, the less than expert. Republicans operate on that; are strengthened by that. While the nuanced and smart that proliferate the campuses and more urbane metro areas of the USA tout academic capital P Postmodernism, they don't know game as it is being played on the streets. Postmodernism is certainly a threat to old orders of doing things, but it is not a tool that only fits into the hands of former slaves, the downtrodden, and indigenous. Actually it is a tool that only works for those who know how to manipulate it. I contend that to manipulate it, one is better served by acting unqualified and ignorant rather than articulating a thesis such as historical slavery.
George Bush II was the only person in his family we could call "stupid", and his family has been amazed at his success eclipsing his more brilliant brother. GWB should thank god for postmodernism, because he got through 2 Presidential elections riding on the mandatory qualification of "ignorant" as part of the Cult of Personality in a postmodern state. Adding to this, in the smaller towns away from metropolitan suburbs across the South is a type of man who is successful by local standards but an ignorant oaf by New York City or Stanford standards. I've met a lot of those kinds of middle aged men -they talk and act just like George Bush II.
America voted for that kind of man.
With every New York Times Op-Ed piece that correctly points to Palin's lack of expertise, they have added to the power of her in Cult of Personality in the postmodern state.
Supporting resources Dump Palin?
Below is, too me, a scary description of what may happen in the US if the tax payer bailout goes forward. It is all a quote from MSNBC MCCAIN VS. OBAMA: BAILOUT POLITICS:
|
The New York Times’ David Brooks sees an ideological shift for the country coming, and it starts with the enactment of this plan: "The Paulson rescue plan is one chapter. But there will be others. Over the next few years, the U.S. will have to climb out from under mountainous piles of debt. Many predict a long, gray recession. The country will not turn to free-market supply-siders. Nor will it turn to left-wing populists. It will turn to the safe heads from the investment banks. For Republicans, people like Paulson. For Democrats, the guiding lights will be those establishment figures who advised Barack Obama last week — including Volcker, Robert Rubin and Warren Buffett." Brooks continues, "If you wanted to devise a name for this approach, you might pick the phrase economist Arnold Kling has used: Progressive Corporatism. We’re not entering a phase in which government stands back and lets the chips fall. We’re not entering an era when the government pounds the powerful on behalf of the people. We’re entering an era of the educated establishment, in which government acts to create a stable — and often oligarchic — framework for capitalist endeavor.” -MCCAIN VS. OBAMA: BAILOUT POLITICS with Brooks comments at bottom |
David Brooks is brilliant, hip and honest. The only brilliant, hip and honest voice from the conservative side of American politics, in my opinion. So my vehemence is not aimed at him, but at those who would carry out the assessment Brooks has prophesized.
With more sadness than vehemence I read on the Barack Obama official campaign website that Obama is supporting the bailout, with conditionals that are a little more disciplined than the initial White House offering. I may not be voting for Obama now.
I think the red-blue state cultural divide may take a back seat to another cultural divide that is as yet unnamed. I cite this article to give some of its tectonic shape: CNN: Fed's bailout plan met with skepticism out West. I will call the Pro-Bailout side the Eastern US Useless Moneychangers Culture. I brushed up against this class when I lived in Arkansas. There was a class of wealth who looked down on anyone 1) with a skill 2) that had to show up at a job. Even CEO's, bank presidents, and the state governor were of the lower class to these people. All these people knew how to do was invest, to hedge massive amounts of abstract wealth in ways that insured their continued aristocratic lifestyle. Doubly emphasize one aspect: this hedge investing class viewed any skill or technical knowledge class of humans as expendable slaves. Now that you have this Eastern US Useless Moneychangers Culture in mind, look at another cultural tectonic landmass that is forming in the form of I.T. intelligentsia: Door Number Three -Bob X. Cringely. I quote from the Cringley op-ed below to give a quick glance of this emerging cultural force, but emphasize my own schema first: the old redneck suburbanite or southerner versus urbane social justice redstate/bluestate may be slipping in relevance. The Giant Data Warehouses with Web Access Culture is on the West Coast ( Amazon and Google). This culture has a new kind of person in their workers and their more adept users/customers. I think this new kind of person has the potential to subvert and take over, and the first and most appropriate target for destruction should be the Eastern US Useless Moneychangers Culture
|
We're in an important transition period not just for IT, but also for business in general. Everything seems to be in flux. And that means the old ways of doing things are changing and ought to. And in this way IT is leading -- or ought to lead -- the way. Later this week I'll be making a dramatic shift and proposing the Cringely Energy/Economic Policy, but first I need to drive home the point that, however different it is from the rest of the company, IT is generally the vanguard for a new corporate culture and whole new ways of doing business for the world. We're in a mess. The world is screwed up and some of that can be traced to the improper use of IT as a financial weapon. But the people of IT actually present many of the answers we need, because they are living much deeper in technology than other parts of the company or of our society. Think about it. There has nearly always been a class of eggheads showing us a path toward new business models, whether it was Edison and Firestone, Hewlett and Packard, Noyce and Moore, Gates and Allen, or Brin and Page. It takes in each case a generation to happen, but ultimately we all (and I mean ALL -- everyone in the total organization) come to look like the geeks of the generation before. So let's lean into that, get on with the transition, and get past this place we're in right now where nobody wants to be. Let's consciously embrace the next model that's generally running fitfully right now inside every company, down in the more functional parts of the IT department. What I mean by this is that times have changed and the world can no longer afford even John Reed's world view with its needs analysis, design, debug, test, rollout strategy -- whether we're talking about a new app or a new marketing campaign. By the time the app (or the campaign) is rolled out, the world changed from HTML to Javascript/SOAP/Ajax (or from financial regulation is bad to financial regulation will save us). At the heart of this is a concept completely foreign to traditional business -- Open Source. What the open source community has demonstrated is the superiority of a strategy that emphasizes early proof of concept, early release, and frequent releases with features added as needed -- probably totaling 20 percent of the features identified in a needs assessment. This is the new IT strategy we live with every day -- 80 percent solutions because they are fast, increasingly reliable, and keep the end users in the loop from almost the beginning. All made possible because of an open Internet (at least until Comcast succeeds and enslaves us), easily grasped standards and impressive demonstrations by companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook, and a ton of start-ups. Wall Street back offices figured this out long ago, they just never got their boss's bosses to understand. Last week's column was a utopian vision that simply requires all the old managers to be reprogrammed or accept a bullet in the head. But it is not at all utopian if applied solely (or initially) to IT, where this stuff actually works pretty well. IT people are most of the time building fortresses or feeling unappreciated -- often both at the same time. Yet to our discredit, we've done a very poor job of explaining or demonstrating or outright selling our utility to the broader organization. Where are our Geek Appreciation Days? Take a Geek to Lunch? Bring Your Geek to School? Taciturn, we disparage our co-workers for not appreciating us while giving them little obvious reason why they should appreciate us. That has to change. Door Number Three isn't just an escape hatch for nerds, it is the way business and culture and civic life will be for most of us a generation further into this information age. We're just leading the way. And if we're leading the way let's embrace that role and become leaders. If, like me, you are likely to be fired, anyway, there's no real downside to this strategy. Let's give it a try. Door Number Three -Bob X. Cringely |
Giant Data Warehouses with Web Access Culture.....march forward and don't fire till you see the whites of their eyes!
I should add that those strongly invested in the redneck Protestant suburbanite or urbane Catholic social justice cultures are like the peasants and indigenous peoples during WW2 -spectators, soldiers or victims in a battle they do not guide. This won't be about valuing all humans equally and giving them equal access to food and housing, and it won't be about giving white rednecks a default safe haven. Both those agendas will only live on in the minds of the old or irrelevant.
Eastern US Useless Moneychangers Culture in the news with their views:Senator Obama
I am one of the millions who find your candidacy for President exhilarating. Across the board on issues and nuanced perceptions of America's needs, I feel you have potential no other politician has offered us in my 46 years of life. I support you way beyond the context of this one Presidential election. I hope to be seeing the effects of your vision long into the future.
Unfortunately, I have some precise business to write you about. The issue of taxpayer bailouts of private investment banking firms. I am absolutely against these bailouts. In the November 2008 election I will not vote for any one running for a national office who voted for the bailouts. With your historic run for the Presidency, I have had an ill feeling about standing absolutely on one issue and voting, or not voting, for you based solely on your Senate voting record with the bailout. In final summation I cannot cheapen our relationship -I must vote or not vote for you based on our agreement on issues.
I heartily encourage you to coordinate with Congressional ( especially GOP ) leaders who are standing up against White House pressure, and articulate a resounding no to this amazing attempt to swindle tax dollars to reward failed market risks in the private sector.
Good LuckI read the Tao Te Ting alot in my year on the ice in Antarctica. The clincher for me is the last poem. It basically acknowledges the big problem trends cannot be avoided unless we 1) avoid symbolic analysis 2) avoid travel/mobility.
So in 1996, at the end of my 13 months in Antarctica, I committed TO mobility and symbolic analysis, which has further mushroomed into my full embrace of digital technology as the cure for social ills. The essence is I saw the Tao as stating an untenable path. Plus I was in the first years of extreme mobility after a lifetime spent bound by localism fetish in Arkansas. I associated localism with a lack of intellect and ability, only those lacking talent tended to stay in Arkansas.
Mobility and symbolic intellectualism are my Tao.
Project Gutenberg TaoI'm an odd liberal progressive that has no problem with lifting moratoriums on domestic drilling. But the vagaries of meaning the Republicans are embedding the phrase with is such a sham. First, the oil that would come from any drilling in the US would be sold on the "spot market", which simply means to the highest bidder -e.g. If China outbids on the barrel of oil, China gets the oil. The spin we get from Republicans is as if the oil resources are nationalized, like in communist countries, and oil pulled from US soil automatically goes to American consumers. Ask a Republican if they want the US government to seize all oil produced on US soil, if they say "no", then tell them its the Drill Here Drill Now may mean no oil for the US consumer if the US consumers are too poor to pay for it.
Good: Republicans are for a free market ( this does NOT have to mean pro-corporations, it DOES have to mean the market will kill off bad ideas, bad people, and bad products, and it DOES have to mean if a product is successfully being sold or method of trade is occurring, including barter or living solely on goats milk -is legit by its simply existing. )
Bad: The REPUBLICAN government is bailing out failed financial services giants.
Good: Republicans are for personal responsibility, innovation and initiative as the means of bettering one's living standard, and not the role of HIGH TAXES paying for bums, idiots, and worse to have things they don't deserve. Key here is the GOP almost always run on a LESS TAXES mantra.
Bad: The McCain-Palin Health Plan is to do an entirely new tax in the form of TAXING HEALTH BENEFITS AS IF IT IS INCOME, with the intention of poisoning the current employer-based health insurance scheme with negative social engineering.
The negative social engineering, combined with higher taxes, would make the McCain-Palin Health Plan a double crime from a purist free market perspective.
Its worth noting that Obama is the only voice of free market principles since these bailouts started happening. He is saying, too nicely for my taste, that these bailouts are the wrong signal to the economic system. He puts it in moralistic language sympathetic for the middle-class, which I think obscures the absolutely right stance he is taking. In a free market, one can make billions, or one can lose all of one's billions -the socialistic crime is government preventing either one.
The Republicans circa 2000-present are the worst failures in American history. Security from terrorism -failed; War- failed; Economy -failed. We'd do better electing a crack whore with a history of recurring head lice. At least we could run the country while she was passed out.
"The MultiMachine is all-purpose open source machine tool that can be built inexpensively by a semi-skilled mechanic with common hand tools, from discarded car and truck parts, using only commonly available hand tools and no electricity. Its size can range from being small enough to fit in a closet to one a hundred times that size. The MultiMachine can accurately perform all the functions of an entire machine shop by itself." -wikipedia
The best documentation of the machine I have seen is at openfarmtech.org. My desire would be Multimachine aiding in the construction or maintenance of this kind of ride:
See my initial take on Palin in this earlier post: Here.
is life any more valuable than its equivalent in a bag of stones? Metaphysically what is the real difference?
This line of inquiry, pretending to flatten the valuation of higher and lower things, is a pathology that began in the 20th century. Hopefully in the 21st century academia labels this as an attempt to overvalue the lower, and undermine the higher.
Previously I've posted a handmade, dumpster parts diesel motorcycle that's won many awards here. Now I have found another handmade rat bike, and have to admit it is my all time favorite example of post apocalyptic technology.
Here are quotes from Brit Chopper that form the basis of my admiration:
The entire bike was built in my front garden on a sloping driveway. I made a point of using basic hand tools ( apart from the welder ) just to show it can be done. I didn't plan any of it, just made it up as I went along. The 2CV engine cost less than £100, and the rest cost less than £70.[See whole magazine article here]
Time taken to get from a pile of bits to MOT( no MSVA ) ready trike: 46 and a half hours.
The frame was built from scratch by me, in thick ERW tubing. The exhaust guards are made from 10mm mild steel bar, which I bent into shape around a tree.
It's a bit of a wheelie-monster in first, being so short and light, but handles really well with no wobbles or shaking in the steering and despite only having 35 odd BHP it flies along.
I should stress this trike builder is famous for extremely polished and beautiful handmade machines that have won many awards. The trike I'm featuring here is a personal project the guy did for himself, and not representative of his custom orders such as this.
Why do I like this trike so much? Here are the reasons:
 |
Sections of exhaust pipe joined, not by welding, but by the use of exhaust jointing paste, beer cans and jubilee clips. The result may look unconventional, but it doesn't leak or fall apart, and did not involve the spending of money or the use of heavy equipment.
This is important for austere times such as an apocalyptic anarchic phase in which one would want to keep the machines going.
( learned this researching rat bike culture on wikipedia )
The US government has just made the largest economic intervention in decades -acquiring control and fiscal ownership of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The governments stated motives were the prevention of greater chaos in global financial markets, and lower mortgage burdens for US home loan debtors.
So the Bush Regime and Republicans, and for that matter Evangelicals, stand for the free market? Free Market 101, Tenet #1, is that the systems decides what survives, dies, weakens, or gets stronger. To help a dying system node is to undermine the system's own means of hygiene.
Everyone on board for this government economic intervention are not for free markets. Period.
These are looter scum that just raided my pocketbook. I am taking every word of anti-socialism and anti-big government that has spewed forth from the Reagan Echo Chamber and hurling it straight at every business person and Republican administration official who was for this or benefited from it. You are scum.
My family is currently DOING WELL in this economy. We 1) do not own a house 2) do not own a car, walk to work and to the store 3) have over $25,000 in the bank 4) We work in a small firm that makes computers for broadcast news, and as the world goes to hell and people want to watch on the TV, our company gains in that very scenario.
I am living out a dream as master of disaster economics, enjoying watching the stupid plummet into a cesspool of economic and social ruin, all while I live a beautiful, safe, and austere life.
Now the Republicans have taken some of my tax money and rescued people more foolish than me. I'm sorry, weren't Repubs supposed to be the party that believes in a meritocracy? That failures, the stupid, and the underperforming get their just deserts of poverty? And now you dare prop up that very type?
I am speaking of the inner-self and personal value of all on board this hypocritical government action -you are scum inside, and I will here on out practice politics and economics designed to f*ck you in half.
Today I'm writing with a religious motif and maybe even religious hyperbole. I am playing a fool's game of "divining" meaning from ancient pasts and prophesying the future. Here I go...
I can't really "know" what happened in extremely remote history, but I do know the narratives that survived to my time, and can preach on their relative value -which old stories are worth less by virtue of whoever draws semantic sustenance and guidance from them will become manipulated lower-humans we (those drawing from better information) work to death. Or, more likely, they just die off by living in the spatial-temporal poorest choice, killed by the fitness question imposed from an evolutionary god who has no malevolence.
The first narrative structure of the Bible is the story of the Garden of Eden. My favorite deconstruction of this tale is to look at its regional origin, the Fertile Crescent and Mesopotamia. In that birthplace of military conscription and urbanity, the Garden story stands as primordial antecedent. The Garden has a corporeal relevance in those old river valley civilizations, the Garden is simply a over-the-top idealization of oasis autonomous culture. An oasis culture would have had fruit dropping off the trees, water, intimate family, no government, and naked people mating with no need for a sense of taboo. To further cinch my tying the Garden to oasis cultures, think of the one Big Threat that would chase everyone from an oasis paradise. A large snake.
Imagine what a tale of simple living the Garden was to both the urban Mesopotamian/Egyptian and ever-warring, ever-wondering pastoralist.
The warcraft and scalable, specialized economy of Sumeria spread to almost all of the Eurasian continent long before the European conquests of the New World. To me, the heritage that goes back to Sumerian warcraft and economy is the basis of difference between the colonialists and the natives who were easily overwhelmed. Mesopotamia's story of primordial simplicity of the Garden was still alive across the New World.It is fine when a nude Adam and Eve, with no taboos and no need to work, live on pages of a book. But when they occupy real land, and they are discovered by Eurasia, with its heritage of warcraft and scaled economy, its time to kill off Adam and Eve or put them to work.
An oasis dweller has no rights, because a platonic utopia has no legitimacy for space on Earth.
So we are through with the easy genocide of Adam and Eve, and note how the story, if lived and literal, is an undesirable lot.
Moving on to today, and something analogous.
Movies of the 20th century have this structure: peaceful setting of family/village/company offices/farm/automobile plant; an obligatory scene or scenes in which all are in a normalized routine that is mundane, some petty bickering that is more for fun than being mean, flirting, children running, someone singing while walking or working. Then something that is a surprise and ominous (such as Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter) comes into the screenplay, or something hugely evil such as a Death Star, Decepticon, Cujo, Illyria, asteroid, or the Event Horizon.
The first thing wrong with this narrative form is the feeling of entitlement to peace we assume for the first scene people. Nothing wrong with Hollywood scriptwriters using this emotion if the audience has it to be exploited, Hollywood's just trying to make every buck they can. What is wrong is us having this emotion of entitled peace.
The second thing wrong is also the second thing on the storyboard. The impetus for change and adaptation is a bad guy, or a whole bad Empire with a guy named Darth as Project Leader. Its, like, always some Nazi, messin up our bong hit, man.
Entitlement, to peace with no contingencies attached ( or shown in the story ). And adaptation. It is rarely the antidote after evil upsets the peace, but rather a Thor-Messiah reaches out and touches someone bad with the hammer. The villagers get to go back to their entitled carefree existence, such as the last scene of boy-on-boy-ass-slapping in the bed in the Lord of the Rings movie.
All entitlement and no adaptation makes Jack a dead body.
Ok, enough beating us all up over our dominant pleasure narrative of the last century. What is the answer to making this better?
Hollywood has willingly blown up this convenience store nutrition-narrative a few times. Clint Eastwood did it a little. Some zombie movies did. But this was just nihilistic shock, not a lot of useful info on what the right system of thought would be.
The right system of thought would be eternal pragmatism, eternal sense of contingency, eternal vigilance. Not a mean spirited leaving behind of emotional attachment, not in love with "change" to the point of infatuation, but a knowing that the world is full of wrong places to live and best places to live. And making a move now if you live in the wrong place. By place I might mean anything from house, job, whole town, region, nation, or religion.
In the 80's or 90's Yuppies were made fun of in the press. Wow, kinda got that wrong. Lets go visit the pathetic dumbasses in the cancer ward of a Louisiana hospital. They stayed in their little petrol-chemical town, a press featuring stories that made them proud of their lack of mobility, and watched the smart nerd move on to less polluted regions. Wrong move, or non-move as the case might be.
Move. Not necessarily to the most wealthy position, its not that simple. Move to where its safe. Down is a watchword for me. The bad things are likely to be thrown down-wind ( pollution), down-stream( pollution and water overuse from upstream), and certainly on low lying land near water is a bad idea. Move to where, if law and social order break down, you don't have windows easily gotten into ( never live on the first floor ), and good guys with guns will be more prevalent than bad guys with guns. Or places with lots of ice or ocean that keep poor bad people far away.
Adapt. Safety will be technological, the "good life" much more so.
Give others a break, and a chance, and some margin for error, but do not corrupt this rational level of compassion with unlimited sense of connection with those who will die in the jaws of civilization disruption.
In the new kind of narrative for survival in the 21st century, we should easily give bad press for some places, dishonor traditions that produce hideously deformed people, and mock those who died holding on to the welcome sign of Shitville. On the positive, we should be screaming from rooftops about the best life practices, about the most enabling skills, about the points on Earth where intelligence finds expression and crime is abnormal. We should want to share information on what works.
In America, the Old Left and the Old Right are doing little to enable the above narratives and dialogues. But then, their constituents are those who won't move or won't adapt. Rich and poor alike in their more passive followers, they are energized by media that reveres their lifestyle as a civil right, when civil rights were intended to protect equal access to adaptation and change more than economic equality of statically defined lifestyles. Those who believe their lifestyle sacred and protected miss the point that their lifestyle is protected from harassment but not from becoming the walking dead adhering to a static, deterministic biography.
The smart walk away.
I want to see the OS become the system bus device manager, with the only thing sexy it does is CPU intensive audio visual programs, or some crazy math thing, that read write locally ( and that of course is for professionals or hobbyists ). Beyond that, all the processes anyone gives a **** about are hybrids that have half of a life on the web and half on the local bus. If one was to say "I'm not using the internet today", will effectively be saying "I am just going to be checking if my OS sees all the devices connected on the system bus, and I'll check the memory access speed. Thats all I'm doing today with my computer".
Gov. Palin is running for VP on the John McCain GOP ticket.
I wish it was an Obama/Palin ticket, as I bet many Americans do.
Whole book online in HTML and PDF format here.
As the author of this book, I offer this grid of what the book is, and is not:
Over at John Robb's blog he is musing on what a "Resilient Community", existing in a chaotic 21st century world, would look like. He brings up the abstracted platform of containerized shipping as a design inspiration for such communities.
Yes, yes, yes! Robb has hit upon something great.
I see the containerized shipping platform as a way to explicitly state the friction points in society. By friction points I mean any point where objects/people/information must pass through a "checkpoint". A checkpoint is any point of observation labor and judgement -e.g. "is this package legal or safe?", "is this person a terrorist?", "is it safe to invite this person in my house?", "should I marry him?", "are these pesticides safe? ", "is this email a virus ","is this email for joe_user@example.org","is that child tall enough to ride this rollercoaster?","are these tomatoes ripe?". Humans, as well as all animals, need these friction points. Why am I calling it a "friction point"? Because the flow of objects slow or stop at that threshold. The threshold is sometimes all physical, sometimes all semantic.
Shipping containers created a revolution by tidying up the transport and trade of goods. Before containers, goods were handled by dock workers at several transition points. This took time, the workers stole some of the goods, and the dock workers were a part of the union, socialist, mafia, and often Catholic culture. A southern trucker, with typical contempt for such working class northerner culture, saw these dock workers performing their trade on a dock and dreamed up how box the cargo up so the producers and consumers of goods could save money, and the vermin culture wouldn't have their livelihood. It worked, and now that vermin culture is long gone.
Switching gears a little here, there has emerged an orthodoxy in the countercultural schemes for a platform. These orthodoxies tend to want no friction points, or simply place all friction in the semantic distinction between their alternative society and mainstream society (Mainstream is always judged bad, alternative is a frictionless zone of no judgement). It is interesting to note the Burning Man culture as maturing through this, from wide open to needing security.
Back to John Robb's "Resilient Community" musings, and a platform. Humans need civilization, and it is time we containerized it for safe passage through time, by maturing to a point where all are conscious of the flow, and where/when the free flow points and friction points should appropriately exist. Not a police state with police judging people's validity of movement, but a people state policing with a precision, decisiveness, violent intervention, wealth and innovation protection that makes police states of the past look like what they really were: weak, pathetically poor and stupid.
|
A little about the non-philosophical. Sealand rocks! I was once the bookkeeper that did all the bill of ladings for cargo loaded on Sealand ships in Akutan, Alaska. The captains were really smart and cool. It was also something I liked about coastal Alaska . I remember watching a steady stream of cargo ships passing by while moored in Southeast Alaska, and thinking how densely commercial and modern in a truly contemporary sense the shipping corridor of Alaska is. Its the perfect mix of wilderness, high bandwidth flow of trade, big transport infrastructure things like ships and planes, and no farms and few roads. Most of America is a mix of rural farm-culture politics and old urban-culture politics. Alaska was neither. Those big Sealand ships, along with airline travel, are what enables modernity in Alaska, and that (with no rural farm ethos to corrupt it) felt more cutting edge than anything in the lower 48. No wonder I love Alaska. |
This is an open letter reply to Peter Bohmer referencing his writing Reflections on the Dead Prez Concert and Events After Concert, and using the Seattle Times news article Evergreen State College divided after riot as my main source of information.
Peter Bohmer,
I am a TESC alumni, graduated with a Bachelor of Science in August 2003. Between September 2000 and June 2003 I was a resident of the TESC dorms. I was politically engaged on campus, putting up posters for a Capitol fountain gathering/rally reacting to Bush's gaining of the White House with a suspicious vote count, and also was in the TESC delegation at the NW student's anti-war conference in January 2002. I give all this info to allow for some credence in what follows.
My opinion is, TESC needs police. The extreme and absolute way in which the students ( from the stage: "*Expletive* the police!") and yourself have labelled police activity on campus is the problem.
Yes, I am sure somewhere in America, likely on a Louisiana highway or West Texas town, a police officer is harassing a good and upstanding member of the community. This is horrible and we need colleges that are incubators of dissent, or better yet, the legal acumen needed to crush that kind of police abuse. Unfortunately, voices like yours, and the resonating student sentiment, want an easy fight where the war is not taking place, you want it conveniently on your own campus and away from where the danger and evil truly lives.
Your "Reflections..." commits a few errors. You set up the hierarchical structure of campus governance as the source of its illegitimacy, making the campus police an easy subsequent illegitimacy. You then use a softer looking form of hierarchy, your own cult of personality, in the request that students and faculty keep this entire issue in-house and stay mute to police investigation. You even admit that there are students and faculty that, of their own volition, want to talk or cooperate with the police ("Let us also oppose the collaboration of the Evergreen administration and some students and staff with police agencies"). My god Peter, thanks for showing us where, when and how abuse of power, the dark side of solidarity in secret societies, and the like take place in flat-hierarchy movements. Class A work there, buddy.
The other error in "Reflections..." is the distortions that occur near its closing statements. Wars, growing militarization, police. It is unfortunate the montage you present as an ultimate justification mixes up good guys and bad guys. The police officers in Olympia, and especially on TESC duty, probably hold extremely progressive world views. I've sat next to the Sheriff of Thurston County and had email exchanges with the TESC police officer while I lived there. Nice people judging by everything I saw. I don't believe they are causing any of the very real problems in our world.
This brings me to a subtle analogy on yours and a massive amount the TESC student body's values. I believe the police are recipients of stigma much like the untouchable class in India. That class in India has several middle class occupations that receive the stigma. It is hardly an analogy, but more like a direct truth that faculty such as yourself, and maybe a majority of students, see the police as an untouchable class. These police officers can commit no good act, nor offer a dialogue that assures us of their progressive values, that would wipe away the irrational and eternal hate many on the TESC campus have for them.
This dovetails back to us needing campuses that are incubators for positive change in our society. The incubation at TESC is becoming more renowned for Earth Liberation Front cells and cop hating, not a real return on our money or our faith.
Moving away from the murky world of values and intent, to immediate pragmatics in an imperfect world. Once during my residence on campus I was one of only five or so students who witnessed this event: a naked student, possibly high on something, had jumped on a moving car and bashed his head in the windshield. I saw him walking, naked, along the soccer field road. The police came up behind him, asked him to stop, he didn't respond, and they wrestled him to the ground, handcuffed him, and took him away without a scratch from their wrestling that I could see. This was a real incident, not conjecture. What would a police-less campus have done? I venture to guess, too little or too much.
Yearly the US has one or more shootings on a campus resulting in many people shot dead. Here is where your polemics meet a stark dose of reality: A guman is killing 5 people per minute on the TESC campus. What then, cop haters with no guns? What then?
Dunbar's number is the supposed cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable social relationships: the kind of relationships that go with knowing who each person is and how each person relates socially to every other person.
I am saving it here because the "we can only manage a social network of 150" cliche comes up so often.
It's weird, the pro-evolution crowd are the usually the same crowd that points to retro points in civilization as summations of the human condition. Social primates, village dynamics....big deal. We all know the one who makes it in New York City is the superior person, the hick in the village and monkey at the zoo are their inferiors. But in our era such talk is impolite. Thank god evolutionary advance isn't stopped by prohibitions in language.
CORRECTION: The last thing I said (above) about New York City and the superior person is wrong. In the blog comment below SerpentLord says a much more positive message that challenges Dunbar's number.
"This actually increases our obligation to be politically correct because the phrase "superior person" is just as technically backward as it is politically backward. It is a superior network, not a superior person which gives some people advantages over others.
It also allows us to address issues of "being connected" in a positive way (create an environment which helps people develop and exploit connections) rather than a negative one (create an environment which breaks up connections that give some people more advantages than others.) "
This gives a really good antidote against primitivism ( a contagion on the Left ) and crude elitism ( a contagion on the Right ). The Superior Network.
Posts
All Comments
